The RTL8105E supports the PCI Express 1.1 bus interface for host communications with power management, and is compliant with the IEEE 802.3u specification for 10/100Mbps Ethernet. It also supports an auxiliary power auto-detect function, and will auto-configure related bits of the PCI power management registers in PCI configuration space. The RTL8105E features embedded One-Time-Programmable (OTP) memory to replace the external EEPROM (93C46/93C56/93C66/ TWSI).

Advanced Configuration Power management Interface (ACPI)—power management for modern operating systems that are capable of Operating System-directed Power Management (OSPM)—is supported to achieve the most efficient power management possible. PCI MSI (Message Signaled Interrupt) and MSI-X are also supported.

In addition to the ACPI feature, remote wake-up (including AMD Magic Packet and Microsoft Wake-up frame) is supported in both ACPI and APM (Advanced Power Management) environments. To support WOL from a deep power down state (e.g., D3cold, i.e., main power is off and only auxiliary exists), the auxiliary power source must be able to provide the needed power for the RTL8105E.

The RTL8105E supports Receive Side Scaling (RSS) to hash incoming TCP connections and load-balance received data processing across multiple CPUs. RSS improves the number of transactions per second and number of connections per second, for increased network throughput.

The RTL8105E supports Protocol offload. It offloads some of the most common protocols to NIC hardware in order to prevent spurious wake up and further reduce power consumption. The RTL8105E can offload ARP (IPv4) and NS (IPv6) protocols while in the D3 power saving state.The RTL8105E supports IEEE 802.3az Draft 2, also known as Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE). IEEE 802.3az operates with the IEEE 802.3 Media Access Control (MAC) Sublayer to support operation in Low Power Idle mode. When the Ethernet network is in low link utilization, EEE allows systems on both sides of the link to save power.